Its been all over the news in one of the largest and most successful publicity stunts ever. IBM have beaten the world champion of chess, Gary Kasparov, with a computer known as Deeper Blue (an upgraded version of Deep Blue which lost to Kasparov in a previous event).

The amount of coverage IBM have had online, on TV, radio and in the papers is astounding. Not only have the results been faithfully reported but the whole event had been billed as humanity's last stand against the onslaught of technology. Journalists have been posturing on whether Deeper Blue can think, whether its alive and every other form of sci-fi possibility.

Deeper Blue is a massively parallel computer capable of one thing - playing chess. It does this by checking through over one hundred years of chess history stored in its memory and with some fancy maths. It doesn't understand what its doing or why. It has no emotion and felt no joy in winning. Why it beat Kasparov is for the chess pundits to debate, but for me the important thing is that Kasparov's defeat is not that important at all.

Artificial Intelligence scientists have promised much with the creation of thinking computers. With little success their promises have become hollow. By focussing on limited 'thinking' applications such as games like chess they thought they might jumpstart the process of creating a thinking machine. But chess can be reduced down to maths which computers can deal with infinitely better (and faster) than humans.

So while computers have got 'better' at chess, scientists haven't got any closer to making something which can think. So in the final analysis it seems that IBM's so-called triumph rings slightly hollow. Humanity doesn't need to make a stand against technology. It is this Luddite attitude which causes so many problems worldwide. When modern medicine can help people reject it. When the Internet frees people the authorities try to neuter it with regulation. Instead of knee-jerk reactions of suspicion to new technology we should look at each new development with open minds.

Technology was created by us. It is an embodiment of us. It isn't our enemy unless we make it that way and who would willingly do so? I don't suggest for a moment that we unthinkingly embrace all technology, careful thought is needed, but I do suggest a more positive attitude - especially in Europe.

When scientists do eventually manage to create thinking machines that are self-aware, intelligent and self-sufficient, then we'll have reason to get worried. But before scientists come even close we're going to have to work how we work. We don't truly understand how we think or how the brain works as a whole, yet we try to model computers on ourselves. There's a long way to go and being scared of technology by listening to the media hysteria is just going to make the journey longer.

 

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by Jeep

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